“There’s very few places up and down this strip that [our customers] can get the kind of burger that they get here. They can find a McDonald’s, they can find a Burger King, but that’s not the same thing, and that’s what they tell us every day.”

Last April, the fiery-tempered face of the restaurant who kept customers in line, kicking out anyone who broke her rules, passed. In her place, Ann’s sister, Josephine Culver, and her three brothers stepped in to keep the restaurant going.

As recently as the late 1990s, the DeKalb County neighborhood of Kirkwood was known for street-corner drug deals, blatant prostitution, and a crumbling central business district. An influx of families and commercial investment has softened Kirkwood’s hard edge, resulting in an urban village of roughly 5,000 people that residents call harmoniously diverse.

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